With video: Macomb murderer wanted to control girl

Macomb Daily staff photo by David N. Posavetz
Wendy Wasinski, left, donned in a shirt memorializing her daughter, murder victim Jessica Mokdad, sits in court with victim advocate Johanna Delp of the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office at the sentencing of Mokdad’s killer, her stepfather Rahim Alfetlawi, in 2011 in Warren.

A man who snuffed out the blooming life of his bright and beautiful stepdaughter killed her out of control and cold-heartedness, not religion.

That was the conclusion of the girl’s mother and a judge at Thursday’s sentencing of Rahim Alfetlawi, who was convicted of first-degree murder last month in the shooting death of 20-year-old Jessica Mokdad in a Warren home in 2011.

“You said before that Allah, God, prophet Muhammad and his family were with you,” Jessica’s mother, Wendy Wasinski, told her ex-husband in court. “And now as you can see after all the dawah, prayers, you made during the trial, they are not with you. Allah, God, will not forgive you for what you’ve done, and neither will I.

“You took my daughter from me, my only child. …You are a coldhearted killer and deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

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Immediately following the slaying, it was considered a potential honor killing under Alfetlawi’s Muslim faith in which a woman is murdered for bringing dishonor to her family. One anti-Islamic organization has used the case in its protests of such killings and held the “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference” in Dearborn around the 1-year anniversary of her death last April.

But those involved in the case said Alfetlawi’s religion played only a minor role. Judge David Viviano said the killing stemmed from Alfetlawi’s “bizarre obsession with her every move.”

“There is no religion which sanctions your actions,” Viviano said. “This was not an honor killing. There is no code of honor that supports a coward and a hypocrite.”

The judge described the crime as Alfetlawi’s “last act of control over his stepdaughter.”

Alfetlawi was provided an interpreter in court and remained mostly quiet during the hearing, merely saying, “I apologize to the court.”

Alfetlawi shot Mokdad once in the head as she placed a box on a bed in her grandmother’s Tallman Street home. Mokdad turned himself in to Center Line police.

Alfetlawi had helped raise Mokdad since she was a young girl after he married Wasinski, a Hamtramck native who lived in Warren. The family moved from Dearborn to Minnesota in 2005.

As Mokdad grew into her teens, Alfetlawi began controlling her. Mokdad told her mother shortly before her death that Alfetlawi had raped her two years previously after she had married at the age of 17.

Mokdad in 2010 visited the Detroit area, where her biological father and maternal relatives live. Alfetlawi forced her to return to Minnesota in March 2011 but after eight days of living under his tight control, she fled to the Detroit area in early April 2011. Alfetlawi on April 30 drove to Michigan, first going to her biological father’s Grand Blanc home and then going to Warren where Mokdad’s maternal grandmother lived.

A witness during the trial provided chilling testimony that Mokdad foreshadowed her death while riding a train from Minnesota to Detroit. She trembled as she predicted her stepfather would kill her if he was able to be alone with her.

A juror in the case as well as Mokdad’s father and her best friend attended the sentencing. Her mom and best friend wore memorial T-shirts.

“I needed to see him go to prison,” the juror said. “I needed to see that he will be gone and won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”